The Morrigan's Crow and the Men of Bags...
A journey into the underworld
For when the Sons of Mil (the Celts, the Milesians) the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the Tuatha Dé Danann in full possession of the country. In the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the book of the Taking of Ireland, (12th C) , the coming of the Tuatha dé Dannan, the Tribe of the Goddess Danú, is told. The tall, blond, red-haired strangers who are expert in swordsmanship, healing, the magical arts. Who married local mortals and taught them many skills. They have lived among us and before us. This is how they came to Ireland as we are told in the Lebor Gabála Érenn:
In this way they came in dark clouds from northern islands of the world. They landed on the mountains of Conmaicne Rein in Cannoachta, brought darkness of the the sun for three days and three nights. Gods were their men of arts and non gods their husbandmen.
They did. Believe it or not. Mythology is not fantasy, it is history. Whether they were gods, supernatural beings or faeries is irrelevant. They were and they are here, in Eriú. In subterfuge. There are too many invasions to account for. John Moriarty, who lived in the Dreamtime, between this world and the the other, he knew. He walked between the worlds before he was even dead. He was a genius in dialogue with them. He knew them. He smelled them. He felt them. He walked with them.
So he knew what the Invasions meant. That we are who we are in spite of the Invasions. But we are in exile on our own land.
The changing world we project into the unchanging, eternal Brahman, King James says. Ya evam veda, Yeats says. Ya evam veda. He who knows.
Cessair came,
Partholon Came,
Nemed came
Firbolgs came
Tuatha De Danann came
Fomorians came
Celts came
Christians came
Vikings came
Normans came
English came.
Inis Fail
Ireland is and has been a foreign country,
It is a country we are exiles in,
It is a country we are all dispersed wild geese in.
The Battle of Kinsale was lost by both sides.
The Battle of the Boyne was lost by both sides.
We are all O’Neills and O’Donnells,
We are all Owen Roes exiled overseas in Ireland.
Inis Fail in India
Inis Fail in England,
Inis Fail in Ireland
We will bury you in the Mandukya Upanishad.
John Moriarty, Dreamtime
We’ve lost track of the Invasions. There is another one now, going on right under our noses, and most of the Irish are so colonised, they do not even notice. But the good news is, we can take refuge in what has always been there. Because Ireland, Éire, has two races, a visible one, partly perhaps Celtic with a composite of all our conquerors, and an invisible one. We might call them faeries. They are not faeries. The Sídhe are a bold, majestic race of beings. They are the gentry of this island. They are seers to whom death is a passport to their world of the Sídhe, a world where there is eternal youth and, more importantly, joy. You do not interfere with them. Listen to Eddie Lenihan talking about how to do not mess with the Sídhe and their forts. A story from Quin, Co. Clare.
I spent a lot of my childhood down there in summers, and I was named after a girl called Síofra, down there in Quin. Her brother Daragh had a glass eye after he poked one out with a scissors. We all used to go up to Quin Abbey on the bikes and poke around the old, cracked tombs looking at the bones on the old skeletons. The thrill of it. Anyway, Quin is a place dear to my heart. It always felt like there were portals around there. I’ve a memory of one stone circle near the Tobin’s house, and when we rushed up to it through the long grasses I could feel something there. Unnameable. I didn’t even call it ancient, I didn’t really know what that meant as a child. I did but I didn’t call it that then. It was feeling of something coming through the grasses at us. Something bigger than us, older, but kind and watchful. So, Eddie Lenihan’s story about the men hunting around the fort at Quin has a special feeling for me. They went out in late October, in ‘a grand frosty bit of weather’. They hunted all over the townland, and got nothing.
Even Biddy Early said keep away from that fort. Keep away. They were passing the fort. Sean, one of the men, saw a white shape like a goose and fired at it. Feathers spread out and the goose fell into the brances of the hedges. The other man saw nothing. Sean said The goose. Do you not see it? The blood? The feathers? He reached down to get the goose. There was nothing. As his hand touched the goose there was nothing but something like frogspawn turning black stuck to his hand. Pat said get out of there from the fort. Pulled Sean down the hill. They got to the road to neighbours. To their own houses. Pat had his breakfast next morning, lit up his pipe at the frosty morning, and Sean would have done the same but there was no sign of him. They were bachelors. There was no family. So he went to Sean’s. No reply. Again he knocked. Nothing. At the window, a tap. No reply. He found the door locked. Nobody locked the doors then. He went around the back. Inside he saw Sean, every bone in his body was twisted. His mouth even, his eyes. All twisted. He had to get him out of there. He broke the window in he went pushing the latch. Sean could not talk to him he was so twisted. In came the doctor and he said (he came quicly, he had a car). Hospital he went to in the doctor’s car. It was the workhouse hospital at Garúla (?). It was November. The matron had a look at him. He was in the silence of the place. It was not comfortable. The moon was up. He was crippled, the moon shining in the workhouse windows, and it was cold and Sean could not sleep. Out, late in the night, he heard a scratching. Rats. If they came in, they’d eat him. There was no staff at all.
Then he saw a leg, and another, and another, and it was four human legs coming through the old stone walls. Legs. Worse came. The hands. Elbows, the end of a coffin. The legs, the elbows, the hands, the rest all came out throught the walls. Two men, and carrying a coffin. The bed. At the bedside. They took him. Put him in the coffin. You are the man who fired into the fort. He unscrewedd the screws of the lid of the coffin, and there in the coffin was a fourth man covered in blood, his head to his feet. Look what you did to our brother. Pick out every pellet from him, or you will be in that coffin with him.
Sean could not move. He rolled out of the bed onto the floor, reached his hand into the dead man and pulled out the pellets he’d fired into the fort. Plop, plop, plop, building them up, one by one. Hurry on said the men. As the sun came up, Sean found the last pellet in the man’s neck and it landed in the heap of pellets. If you think his troubles were over… the man rose up out of the coffin and stared at Sean. ‘Well, well, are you the man that fired at me, and I did nothing to you at all… to fire into a fort…’ Sean dashed under the bed, screaming and the sun rose up over the horizon, and the three men rushed out with the coffin and out through the wall they went. Sean lay shaking under the bed. The matron came in at half past eight and the doctor looked at him and said ‘Where is the patient?’ The legs under the bed was all he saw. Out of the workhouse he ran, down to Ennis, and there was a ship about to sail for Limerick and put his arms around the mast and he could not be taken off the mast until he got to Limerick, and from there he got a ship to America and he never came back to Ireland after that. He knew well if he did, they’d be waiting….
For the wonderful narration of this story, listen to Eddie Lenihan here.
So, they are not to be messed with. They are in their own parallel realm. They have their own battles. Before they came were the Fir Bolg. They were Men of Bags, Greek slaves who left Greece in a great fleet for Iberia, then to Ireland. The Lebor Gabála Érenn says that they were enslaved by the Greeks and made to carry bags of soil or clay, hence the name 'Fir Bolg', ‘The Men of Bags’. The Cath Maige Tuired says that they were forced to settle on poor, rocky land but that they made it into fertile fields by dumping great amounts of soil on it. They are descended from the Muintir Nemid, earlier settlers in Ireland who scattered to Europe. Those who had migrated to Greece came back as the Fir Bolg, the fourth settlers of ireland. They were overthrown by the Tuatha Dé Danann. In the Book of Leinster the poem of Eochaid records that the Tuatha Dé Danann, the conquerors of the Fir Bolg, were hosts of siabra. Siabra is an old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts. Sídhe. Síobhradh. Síofra. It is etymologically linked to Siddha in Sanskrit. Siddha (सिद्ध siddha; "perfected one") is a term that is used widely in Indian religions and culture. It means "one who is accomplished." It refers to perfected masters who have achieved a high degree of physical as well as spiritual perfection or enlightenment. Like the Tuatha Dé Danann.
The Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danaan fought at the Battle of Magh Tuiread.
A Battle on Midsummer’s Day–
The Tuatha come in a flaming line, wielding red speckled sheilds.
The Fir Bolgs have smelted swords, spears and trowels.
Four days and nights they fight,
The Morrigan, Badb and Macha use magic from the
Four Cities of Findias, Gorias, Murias, Falias,
Spread fierce grey clouds that bring dense fog,
Wind that brings fire and blood–
Falling on the Fir Bolg, they shelter for three days and three nights.
Fir Bolgs with their counter spells,
They clear the fog, the fire and blood.
Sreng, champion of the Fir Bolg
In Single combat with Nuada
Cuts off his hand and half his shield
In one Blow.
In the end
The two armies met, the Tuatha Dé Danann,
offered that Eriu be divided in two
Fir Bolgs refused, fearing that
one half might take all of Eriú.
© Siofra O’Donovan, 2023
Nuada lost his hand in the Battle of Mag Tuired, cut off by Sreng, of the Fir Bolg. Bres rose to power while Nuada lost his right to govern until Dian Cécht the Physician replaced it with a silver hand from his own son Miach. Nuada was a great warrior king. There were chiefs, like Credenu and Neit, the God of Battles. Goibniú the Smith, Dian Cecht the Healer Physician, Badb the Goddess of Battles, Morrigú the Crow of Battle, Macha, the Nourisher Horse Goddess and Ogma, Nuada’s brother who taught writing and from where we have Ogham writing.
In the two Irish manuscripts, the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster, the Tuatha Dé Danann are described as 'gods and not-gods'. Sir John Rhys considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit deva and adeva. It is also said, in the Book of the Dun Cow, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha Dé Danann, ‘but that it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence’. Something to think about. They are known as far away as New Zealand, among the Maoris, and in Hawaii. Tall, attractive beings with pale skin, high foreheads, long red hair and large blue eyes. The Kahuna in Hawaii revere the ‘Tuha’ people of the Red Hair. As far away as New Zealand, they have the triple spiral.
The Tuatha Dé Danann were gods. Teachers of medicine, smithery, communication and druidry. And they were non Gods (Skt. adeva )- farmers and shepherds.
Let us take a look closely, at one of them. The Morrigan. Morrighan/ Mór-Riogain/ Morrigú was a great Warrior Queen, a great stirrer of fury and frenzy in battle, a bringer of Death. Supreme War Goddess of the Gaels, a Greek Hera, she was the moon preceding the sun, and she was worshipped with ferocious rites. She is fully armed and goes to battle with two spears in her hand. Like Poseiden in the Illiad, her battle cry was as loud as a thousand men. The Morrigan always had a crow, and would become that crow at will. That became a sign of death on the battlefield, her flying over was a harbinger of death. Her presence brought death and she was greatly feared, causing warriors to fight all the more, for her presence brought such fear. The landing of them on your cottage roof may mean the death of one of the family or some great misfortune, the bird was like the predecessor of the Bean Sídhe.
John Moriarty tells us in ‘Dreamtime’:
‘The Morrigan is any shape that pleases her. She is any shape that suits her in any situation. She is eel, she is she-elf, she is hornless red heifer, she is red mouthed scald crow. Though a people prayed to her she wouldn’t send rain in a time of drought or stand in battle with them against an invader. Worship of Morrigu, red-mouthed Morrigu, had to be pure…. In her form as scald crow, she called above me everyday, (in the Paps) circled and called, searching for afterbirths, for corpses, for carrion…’
Morrigú, Bringer of Death
She of the Crow
Frenzied in battle
Sleek, fast, marvelling as men
Fall and stagger
Off the battlefield,
Throw themselves at her feet.
Morrigu gives superb valour to Cúchulainn,
Nerves him for the cast,
Guides the course of his unerring spear.
When the sidhe woman Aoibheall came to Dunlang O’Hartigan
At the Battle of Clontarf, April 1014–
The beginning of all our woes,
She begged him to put down his sword
She said you’ll have Happiness for 200 years if you listen.
But the Morrigú had taken his soul
And he, Dunlang O’harigan, and Murrough and Brian Conanig,
The nobles of Eriú-
His own son Turlough,
They all fell.
Sometimes it is worth dying.
Those that never fear the battlefield,
Are entrenched by mud. Mummified by it.
Like the bog men.
The Morrigan’s soul, her crow, picks out their eyes
Takes them to another world
Where they see everything again.
Not a bad sacrifice, to the Morrigú.
A way to be born in another time
A way to see the wretched world with fresh, new eyes.
Maybe they watch us, now.
Maybe, defeated Fomorians even, have
Those pecked out eyes on us.
© Síofra O’Donovan, 2023
It is said that after the second of these battles the Morrigú, daughter of Ermnas (the Irish war-goddess), would proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which had taken place, to the royal heights of Ireland and to its fairy host and its chief waters and its river-mouths. ' Good had prevailed over evil, and it was settled that all Ireland should for ever afterwards be a sacred country ruled over by the People of the Goddess Danu and the Sons of Mil jointly. The Tuatha Dé Danann have their own battles that have nothing to do with human settlers, yet they do sometimes take over the souls of the likes of Dunlang O’Hartigan at the Battle of Clontarf, as we have seen. And they marry mortals, as Macha did with the farmer Cronnchú when she appeared in his house and acted as his wife, without announcing herself, got pregnant, and made him swear, as the sídhe wife does, not to tell the King of Ulster, or anyone about her existence. Read about her here.
Beautiful Aryan myth/history.
Wonderful as usual.